Dazzler? She made a short appearance a few years ago in one of the main series, but I don’t think she’s played a prominent role for years.
In response to the unnervingly convoluted storylines, I gotta say that after a while it really does start to come together. I do suffer a bit because I only read three ongoing series a month, but I always know in a year or so the ramifications of side-stories and miniseries will be nonexistant, anyway.
As hobbies go, for me, reading X-Men books is really inexpensive compared to just about anything else I could potentially be into. Ten dollars a month. As such, I don’t worry if the stories are sometimes ill-composed, or if the illustrations are rushed. It gives me a few moments diversion, and I like the characters. To me, it’s worth waiting for that one brilliant issue among many.
Judging by my teenage experience (which was too long ago, but my memory tends to be painfully good) her most interesting appearence was in the late 200’s & early 300s of The Uncanny X-Men from the late 80s. But to be honest, she was eye-candy, and not very useful. And she had the hots for Longshot? My esteem for the character dropped several notches from that point, but still, nice costume! (She wasn’t Rogue-hot, but still…)
They’ve been showing that series off-and-on on the ABC Family channel. They ran a mini-marathon of episodes on the day after X-Men 2 came out.
I’ve been watching some of them and getting a sense of deja vu so I must’ve watched them when they were first aired. But I didn’t remember them being so… bad. Terribly animated. But from the few issues of the original series I’ve read, it seems to be pretty faithful to the comics.
On the other hand, they’re showing “X-Men: Evolution” on Cartoon Network and I’m enjoying it. As far as I can tell, the characters and storylines are completely different from both the comics and the movies – characters are older or younger than they are in the comics, different line-ups and back-stories, etc. I’m impressed with the character design above anything else.
Oh, to be clear, I am not really all obsessed with how she looks. (If I had to pick an X-Men that I thought was prettiest, it’d be Storm based on my very, very limited sample). It’s mostly her abilities and story that interest me. I’ve always been a giant fan of flashing lights and giant sparkly things, and someone that attacks through singing and sound just seems quite fun to my eyes. But, alas, you’re right, she seems to have vanished onto the periphery.
Or if you’re willing to pay a little more, one of the “Marvel Masterworks” anthologies is a slick-paged full-color reprint of the first 10 issues of the X-Men ever published. You can see Iceman back when he was covered in snow, and Beast before he learned to talk with a Harvard vocabulary.
Heh. You really need to read a few issues before you can really judge. Remember: every author is trtying to start out developing their own style, so it takes a few issues to see where they’re going with it. New X-Men is pretty good. Uncannny has been sort of lame, but has potential.
Dazzler, as of last writing, is either dead (killed by Magneto) or in Longshot’s Mojo universe. Your pick: either way, she’s not reallly around anymore.
Personally, I like Ultimate X-Men, but as with Ultimate Spider-Man I have to wonder how long they plan to keep the thing going. I mean, both books have rushed threw some MAJOR plots simply to get favorite characters into the storylines (Venom, anyone?), and already in U X-Men they’ve Killed off Psylock, Sabertooth, and the Hellfire Club, already done the whole “Magneto’s dead, no he’s not” routine, and started up the Pheonix plotline. It just seems to me they’re trying to do too much too quick, and I’m afraid it’s going to cause some serious issues. I do like they way they’ve rewritten a lot of the characters (Rogue and Gambit for one [I’ve always HATED Gambit, but the storyline in Ulitmate X-Men made me really like him). The last issue I read was 31, so I may have missed this little bit, but does anyone else think that Collosus in this universe is gay? He seems to have strong chummy feelings that go beyond “Teammates”.
I liked the New X-Men’s “E for Extinction” storyline, but I didn’t care for the whole “Evil Sister/Shi’ar” storyline that followed. The bit with the students going crazy was cool, but it’s really making me wonder: At what point did the X-Men stop following the “We don’t Kill” clause in the “normal” timeline? I mean, Wolverine’s always been hard to control, but they did plenty of storylines where he’s made the decision not to, and now he just seems to kill indescriminately. Xorn (I think that’s his name) killed a slew of O-Men, and the “Special Students” smashed one guy’s head in with a big rock, and nothing was said about it. And Cyclops is not supposed to be a tough guy. He should NEVER be the kind of guy Emma would want to sleep with.
I’ve read a few X-Treme X-Men, and didn’t like them. Just out of curiosity…how the Hell was Beast supposed to be with that team and the New X-Men at the same time when they were in separate parts of the world? To my understanding, the X-Treme team was supposed to be hiding from Xavier, but in New, Beast is right there along side him. What’s the deal?
By the way…I gather that X-Force/X-Statix are technically part of regular Marvel Universe continuity. (I see that Doop and Wolverine have a miniseries these days.) Are they ever mentioned in other titles, though?
El Elvis Rojo - as I recall, Beast was beaten pretty badly by the villain in that story arc, and another major character was killed. He went back to the mansion to recuperate. Also, he underwent some strange and slightly bewildering physical changes. He was only in X-Treme for the first few issues.
Also, the X-Treme (god I hate that title) team was never hiding from Xavier. They split off from the main group to track down Destiny’s Diaries, and there may be some subtle ideological difference to go along with that.
You kidding? Of course he is, or wants to be, at least. And after his mating with Apocalyspse, he’s become even more troubled and ruthless.
Technically, they were: they wanted no contact with him while they were searching our Destiny’s Diaries, because they feared they could make him too powerful or something. So they mostly cut ties with the mansion.
Heh: Beast went back to the mansion to recuperate, got better, and was promptly almost beaten to death AGAIN.
I thought the E is for… storyline was good, and I liked most of Imperial: expect when the art got all “dirty” (don’t care for that artist: he makes everything seem confusing and poorly laid out). The whole driving the Shiar nuts stuff was great fun. However, I still don’t get why Beast injected Xavier/Nova with those two syringes after Xorn grabbed him. What was the point of that? What was in them?
Oh, you’re right–I forgot about that. Now I’m getting all the different “Is Xavier all right in the head?” storylines confused and should probably stop thinking about it.
Today, after school, I went to the nearest comic books store and bought some titles. Can you tell me if I made the right choices?
Ultimate X-Men Return of the King Part’s 3,4,5: Wolverine tried to kill Cyclops in the Savage Land. Cyclops didn’t die, and they just stopped Magneto from reversing the earth’s magnetic poles. But before he could be stopped, Magneto overheated a nuclear power plant.
X-Men Uncanny 423. Holy War, 1 of 2: T’was only 25 cents. The team just stumbled upon some other mutants who have been nailed to crosses. Angel was able to bring them back to life with healing stuff in his blood. At the end, they found some sort of laboratoy at the bottom of a church.
Ultimate X-Men: T’was free. Issue 1. The Tomorrow People.
X-Men book Vol. 1. Giant Size X-Men #1 & #94-119.
I was very interested in the x-men uncanny and ultimate x-men. The Tomorrow People was okay.
Cyclops isn’t gay, but I think Beast is. Or at least he said something about it in the last issue I read (I tend to get a little behind and then catch up every six months or so). To me this came off as yet another “Look at me, I’m edgy and hip!” ploy by Morrison. He’ll make characters gay, or hermaphrodites, or the Marquis de Sade, or some other thing that he apparently thinks will automatically make his stories deeper and more edgy. Then he frequently forgets to actually DO something with these ideas, and the result is often a story arc that peters out at the end. I don’t think I’ve ever read a Morrison story, X-Men or otherwise, that wasn’t anticlimactic in some way.
And I agree with SolGrundy that Morrison’s dialogue often fails to convince me that I’m listening to anything other than The Uber-Cool Grant talking through the facade of a character. (Which is the case, of course, but it’s not supposed to sound like it.) I do like Emma Frost, but too many of the others are too frequently out of character for me to consider New X-Men a classic run.
I really liked Morrison’s Doom Patrol, but I just don’t think he’s right for the X-Men.
I don’t read any of the “Real timeline” stories anymore, so I can’t quote on that, but it seems like they’re setting up Collosus to be gay in the Ultimate storyline. Could just be my reading into it.
As for beast, he did make that “Feel like a Hindu Fertility Goddess” comment, but I don’t think that means much.
Cyclops isn’t gay, he’s just been having marital troubles with Jean. He’s been making goo-goo eyes at Emma, now the resident sex-pot telepath since Psylocke kicked the bucket.
Beast told his ex-girlfriend he was gay as a ploy to get back at her for dumping him. Now he’s playing with the media reaction concerning his “coming out”, though he’s not actually gay.
Northstar is gay and came out a long time ago. He’s in Uncanny now, and is currently nursing a crush on an oblivious Iceman. They’re buddies, but Bobby is unaware of Jean-Paul’s feelings, and Jean-Paul isn’t holding out much hope of ever getting Bobby.
